MISTRESS OF JUSTICE

When a promissory note for $25 million due to a client bank is stolen from hotshot lawyer Mitchell Reece's office in Hubbard, White & Willis, he turns to an unlikely source for detective help—aspiring jazz pianist/paralegal Taylor Lockwood. Taylor is supposed to recover the note in time to prevent the debtor firm from wriggling out of the debt by declaring bankruptcy—and that client bank from pulling its business from the firm. As Taylor gets down to her investigation— which consists mainly of fighting off the partners' propositions by day and pawing through their offices by night—upstart partner Wendall Clayton plots a merger of Hubbard, White & Willis with a new-money firm—a merger that will throw patrician senior partner Donald Burdick and his supporters to the wolves. The detective plot (torpid theft and, eventually, homicide) and the (far more engrossing) merger plot finally do come together, though not in time for Deaver (Hard News, etc.) to do either one justice.